‘Politics for the Future: Reorienting
Political Institutions Towards the LongTerm’
Prof. Simon Caney
University of Oxford
‘How can today's Europe better safeguard the needs of the
future?’, High level event on the representation of the
rights of future generations
28 Sept 2015, 3pm-6.30pm, EP premises
The Plan
I: The Problem of Short-Termism
II: The Drivers of Short-Termism
III: A Fivefold Proposal
I: The Problem of Short-Termism
I: The Problem of Short-Termism
[1] Environmental Policy (eg Stern Review on The Economics of Climate
Change (2007)).
[2] Housing: Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors Housing
Commission – More Good Homes and a Better United Kingdom (2013).
“We need to end short-term and partial policies for housing.
This requires governments and administrations to raise their
game and shape a long-term political and cross- departmental
consensus on how housing matters.”
“Successive governments have not produced a coherent, longterm strategy for housing … Initiatives from the Westminster
and devolved governments, with public capital support falling,
have focussed on the short term job effects of housing”.
[3] Pensions Policy: House of Commons Public Administration Select
Committee Governing the Future (2007)
I: The Problem of Short-Termism
[4] Foreign Policy: House of Commons Public Administration Select
Committee ‘Governing the Future’ (2006–07).
[5] Disaster Policy: in the case of Hurricane Katrina. Andrew Healy
and Neil Malhotra found that the costs of dealing with the aftermath
cost 15 times more than the amount that preparation would have
required (‘Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy’, APSR (2009))
Helen Clark the
Administrator:
United
Nations
Development
Programme
“Every dollar spent reducing people’s vulnerability to disasters saves
around seven dollars in economic losses. Investing in prevention not
only increases the resilience of countries to future disaster, but
protects economic growth and other development achievements
from being lost in a single catastrophic event.”
II: The Drivers of Short-Termism
II: The Drivers
1. Ignorance (uncertainty, radical change)
2. Self-Interest
3. Creeping Problems: Persons often fail to detect certain problems because
they are gradual in nature, with imperceptible effects, and creep up on them
slowly. (Michael Glantz Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable
Development in the Aral Sea Basin (1999)
4. “Identifiable Victim” syndrome Jenni and Lowenstein ‘Explaining the
Identifiable Victim Effect’ (1997)
5. Vividness and ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ processing systems: Related to this, persons
respond well to ‘vivid’ risks, ones which they personally experience or witness
(‘hot’ mechanisms), but they do not respond well to information acquired not
from personal experience from abstract, general social scientific trends (‘cold’
mechanisms). Elke Weber ‘Experience-Based and Description-Based
Perceptions of Long-Term Risk’ (2006).
II: The Drivers
6. Invisibility: ‘Out of Sight/Out of Mind’. Agents have a
tendency to ignore what is not in front of them. If it is not in
the forefront of their consciousness and their daily routine it can
get pushed to the back of their list of things to do.
7. Positive Illusions: Human beings are prone to “positive
illusions” - such as “over- estimation of capabilities”, “illusion of
control over events” and “perceived invulnerability to risk”
(Johnson and Levin ‘The Tragedy of Cognition: Psychological
Biases and Environmental Inaction’ (2009).
8. Weakness of will/temptation.
9. Procrastination. Andreou and White The Thief of Time
(2010).
II: The Drivers
10. Electoral dependence (electoral cycle) and tenure in office
11. Economic Dependence (political donations)
12. Media Coverage the 24 hour news cycle puts a pressure on
politicians to be able to respond quickly to show that they are
taking action.
13. The Duration of Time which is used by government
departments and by bodies auditing government policy: the
shorter the timeframe, the more those being audited will focus
on the short term.
14. what kinds of performance indicators are used
III: A Fivefold Proposal
Proposal 1: Manifesto for the Future
Proposal: A mandatory requirement that the Government set
out its vision for the future and how it will confront future
challenges and opportunities. It is required to speak to trends
proposed by independent Council for the Future (see proposal
4). (‘Britain/Europe/Wales and its place in the world in 50
years’.)
Tackles drivers
# Lack of visibility. ‘out of sight/out of mind’ – makes the future
visible and hard to ignore
# procrastination – requires people to engage in planning
# temptation and weakness of the will – makes it harder to give
in to temptation
# self-interest: people do not want to look bad
Proposal 2: Visions for the Future Day
Proposal: ‘Visions for the Future’ day built into the
Parliamentary timetable where the Government outlines
its manifesto for the future and the ways it is responding to
challenges and opportunities on the horizon (‘State of the
Union’ speech for the future)
responses from opposition parties; a process of public
justification. Embodies the idea of ‘public justifiability’
(John Rawls). Its effectiveness would be enhanced if
accompanied by national ‘deliberation days’ or deliberative
‘mini-publics’.
Proposal 3: Committee for the Future
Proposal: There be a Select Committee for the Future.
Relation to the Finnish model (1993-2000; 2000-).
Composed of elected representatives; their role is to
scrutinize policy for impacts on future generations; powers
of scrutiny; can compel civil servants and politicians to
answer questions on what they are doing for long-term
goals like avoiding climate change, what plans they are
putting in place. Accountability mechanism for the future.
Responds to tendencies for ‘out of sight/out of mind’,
procrastination, invisibility of the future. Puts the ‘future’
at heart of decision-making in the ‘present’
Proposal 4: Independent Council for the
Future
Proposal: An external Independent Council for the Future.
Produces reports of long-term trends, challenges, opportunities
* Similar to Welsh ‘Future Trends Report’ (Article 11 of Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Bill), but not produced by
Ministers.
* May specify some of the items that the Government must
address in its Manifesto for the Future.
* No decision-making power (no veto or legislative power), but
‘agenda setting’ power (Bachrach and Baratz 1962).
Combats tendency to ignore long-term trends, forces politicians
to confront them, makes the future ‘visible’, makes the problems
of the future part of the agenda for today.
Proposal 5: Long-Term Performance
Indicators and Audit
Long-term Performance Indicators: employ indicators that
reliably track long term performance (eg – ‘health’ metrics)
Consumption and Stocks
i. environmental evaluation using ‘commitment
accounting’ (Davis and Socolow 2014)
ii. ‘natural capital’ index (Dieter Helm)
Investment
iii. Investment in early years childcare and education (human capital)
iv. Investment in science and technology (capital)
Evidence of Forward Planning
v. Implementation of forward-looking mechanisms (horizon
scanning, ombudsman or commissioner, committee for the future)
Extend audit timetable: from annual or three year spending
review (D. King and I. Crewe The Blunders of our Governments
2014)
“extending the timescale of audit. Audit at the moment
takes place mostly on a strictly annual basis. Company
accounts are audited annually, and so are the accounts of
government departments and agencies. But the test of
almost all major government policies, including most of
those discussed in Part II, is whether they remain in place
and also prove to be effective and efficient over a
considerable period of years, say a decade or even longer.
There would be a lot to be said for encouraging – and, if
necessary, permitting – both the National Audit Office
and the select committees of the House of Commons to
assess how well government initiatives were continuing to
achieve their declared objectives after, say, five, ten or
twenty years” (King and Crewe 2014, p.358)
Concluding Remarks
I: The Problem of Short-Termism (macro economic policy,
environment, welfare state reform)
II: The Drivers of Short-Termism (human nature and
institutional design)
III: A Fivefold Proposal
i. Manifesto for the Future
ii. Visions for the Future Days
iii. Committee for the Future
iv. Independent Council for the Future
v. Long-Term Performance Indicators
Acknowledgements
This is part of work with Dr Jaakko Kuosmanen and Dr
Dominic Roser as part of a Policy Brief to be published later this
year.
The research draws on Simon Caney ‘Political Institutions for
the Future: A Fivefold Package’, forthcoming in Institutions for
Future Generations (Oxford: Oxford University Press) edited by
Axel Gosseries and Iñigo Gonzalez Ricoy
The research was funded by Oxford Martin School ‘Human
Rights for Future Generations’.
Thank You!